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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Pseudoscience Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Why it’s not a good idea to respond to cranks, quacks, or pseudoscientists

One of the hazards of standing up for science and science-based medicine (and against cranks) is that some of these cranks will try to contact you at work. That’s why I have a policy about blog-related e-mails sent to me work address, and that policy is that I usually ignore them, whereas I might actually […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Using the lie that shaken baby syndrome is a misdiagnosis for vaccine injury to try to exonerate another accused child abuser (one last word)

On Friday, I wrote about the sort of case that outrages me every bit as much as cases of cancer quackery that lead to the death of patients. I’m referring to the case of Amanda Sadowsky, a four month old infant who died after suffering traumatic brain injuries that appeared consistent with shaken baby syndrome […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Skepticism/critical thinking

Using the lie that shaken baby syndrome is a misdiagnosis for vaccine injury to try to exonerate another accused child abuser

Remember Alan Yurko? To remind those of you not familiar with this particularly odious excuse for a human being, I’ll briefly relate who he is and why he’s so vile. Alan Yurko is a baby killer, pure and simple. He shook his 10-week-old son to death. Normally, such a pitiful excuse for a human being […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Humor

Time to rally the troops against the antivaccine movement again

Here we go again. A week ago, I tried to exercise my blogging powers (such as they are) for some good by rallying my readers to appear at rallies organized by the antivaccine movement against California Bill AB 2109. Fortunately, ultimately Governor Jerry Brown signed the bill, although he did try to insert weasel words […]

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Medicine Surgery

Science-based medicine and what patients want

I’ve frequently discussed the difference between what has come to be known as “evidence-based medicine” (EBM) and “science-based medicine” (SBM). Basically, SBM is EBM in which prior probability and plausibility of proposed medical and surgical therapies are considered along with clinical trial evidence. I don’t plan on getting into that specific issue in detail right […]